


got a curse (i cannot lift)

by stardustgirl



Series: spiral . [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: (as in it progressively gets heavier and heavier until there’s no turning back), (well kind of), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Force-Sensitive Jyn Erso, Heavy Angst, Imperial Jyn Erso, Jyn Erso-centric, Kyber Crystals, Medium Angst, Mentioned Lyra Erso, Past Character Death, Stream of Consciousness, The Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-10-14 18:34:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20605409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustgirl/pseuds/stardustgirl
Summary: Over the course of a year, Jyn learns the meaning of the word dangerous.





	got a curse (i cannot lift)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “Wolf Like Me” by TV On The Radio
> 
> TW: Child Abuse, Isolation, Threatening a Child, Threatening a Child to Get a Parent to Comply

Sometimes, if Jyn tries very, very hard, she can remember her mother’s face.

It’s hard, remembering, because every day she forgets more and more. She doesn’t remember what Saw looks like now, either, though that’s more excusable. Saw had been temporary.

Mama had been permanent.

Or at least, she had thought so.

Most of the time, she stays in her Papa’s room, doing education sims or a puzzle on her datapad until he gets back for the night. He never tells her what he does anymore.

She stopped asking after the first time he came back crying.

(Papa never cried, not before.)

Jyn can’t make her father laugh anymore. One time, she was talking to the droid that comes in occasionally to make sure she’s healthy, and she mentioned that it was as if all the laughter had drained out of him.

The droid only said it didn’t understand human emotions, and left.

Most of the time, she stays in her Papa’s room, but one time, Jyn spent one night in a cold, gray room with only a durasteel bench built into the wall and a rayshield blocking her from the outside. When she asked to see her Papa and was told no, she asked why; the man in the gray uniform and the funny little cap only said that her Papa didn’t want to go to work and that she could go back when he did.

The next day, they brought her back to Papa. He hugged her tight, whispering Stardust Stardust my Stardust I’m so glad you’re safe.

What would they have done with me otherwise? she asked.

Jyn buried her face in his chest after that, and whispered again, Please go to work next time.

(Papa went to work every day after that.)

As time wears on, Jyn decides that she doesn’t like Uncle Krennic anymore.

She thought it was an accident at first, that maybe she had just seen something else when Mama died, but one night she whispers into Papa’s ear and he nods and says yes, yes it was him, no you didn’t see something wrong, but do not make him angry.

He tells her that Uncle Krennic is a dangerous man.

(He is not.)

Putting her in the gray room with the rayshield for two days after she bites him is not dangerous, though she thinks it is at the time. Neither is he the time he threatens to leave her in the gray room with the rayshield for a week when she loudly says she doesn’t like him in front of a pair of the stormtroopers with the green eyes and black armor. He’s not dangerous even when he  _ does _ put her in the gray room with the rayshield for two weeks after she proudly announces at a dinner that her papa is the better of the two, because her papa didn't kill her mama.

But when Uncle Krennic takes away her crystal, telling her that he might give it back if she’s a good girl and doesn’t kick anyone  _ else _ in the shin, she screams and cries and  _ hates him _ because that’s from her  _ mama, _ and Uncle Krennic can’t take that, no one can, not even Papa, and before she knows it the crystal’s flying toward her and he’s flying across the gray room with the rayshield and hitting the wall with a thump that sounds Very Very Bad,  _ that _ is when she begins to learn what dangerous means. When Uncle Krennic stands very, very slowly, and holds his wrist to his bleeding mouth and turns his wristcomm on and calls for stormtroopers,  _ that _ is when she begins to learn what fear means.

(And now, a year later, Jyn can hardly remember her own name, much less her mama’s face.)


End file.
